


Time

by hbxplain



Series: More Lives Than One [8]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), More Lives Than One, Original Work
Genre: Against Elves, Fantasy Racism, Fate, Gen, Istus Is Sick, Istus' Quilt, Season 1, Written by Haven, continuity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 21:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20432564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hbxplain/pseuds/hbxplain
Summary: Cyndor's just worried.





	Time

**Author's Note:**

> A Reminder: this is from our dnd campaign, MLTO! The full campaign can be found on wattpad on the account "stormcause."

This plane's Cyndor is pissed as all hell. Mary may have tampered with this plane's attempt at a ship, but something--or someone--had to motivate her to work against her sister like that.

In the crew's original plane, Cyndor convinced Syl to tamper with her twin's project, and so Syl mysteriously died during the testing of the first prototype, leaving Mary to work herself to exhaustion without her sister's influence. Cyndor pushed the final ship, with the crew inside it, forcefully out of the plane, which made the transition unsteady at best. Then this new plane's Cyndor finished the job...or tried to.

The new plane's Cyndor knew the crew had somehow survived; this posed a problem, because while the Finny of this plane was already dead, the rest of the crew for this plane were still living. To maintain continuity, Cyndor had to let the newcomers push out the originals of his plane, and, also for continuity, he erased any memories of the crew, save Finny who replaced no one, that didn't match up with his plane.

At first he was willing to keep it at that. But then Finny showed herself and her intent to find her friends, and Cyndor had to step in. He let himself--and some of his godly friends--be found by Finny, who claimed to be a goddess herself. That wouldn't have worked in the slightest, except Finny could cross between planes, and the gods sure as hell couldn't. Except for Cyndor. Every Cyndor, in the interest of continuity, can communicate with every other Cyndor--so he knows who Finny is, what she can and can't do.

He plans to just keep an eye on her, hinder her progress, but then Anla shows up. She's mortal, and she's from Cyndor's plane, and she's done nothing wrong continuity-wise. He can't--he REFUSES TO--touch her, even as she unknowingly foils his plans.

☼☼☼

Anla hates elves. She's bored. She's out of a home and a family and a job, and then she stumbles onto a "goddess" meditating in an observatory in an attempt to find her friends--or, in Finny's quick-witted, lying words: her chosen ones.

Anla hates elves. but she's down on her luck, and when she calls Finnaela a "dirty elf," Finny only shrugs and goes back to meditating. Anla doesn't let herself leave. She asks what Finny's chosen will do.

"They will fix things, I hope," Finny says. "Together, they and I will leave this plane of existence."

"Like an elven suicide pact!?"

"Not really," Fin chuckles, shaking her head. "Only two of them are elves. But, in a way... we _will_ let ourselves die to your world."

Anla has been so lonely for so long. She takes this as her excuse, and she follows Finny like a puppy.

Anla works at this, at the first thing she's had the opportunity to work at in years. She recruits people left and right--some who hate elves, some who love them, some who just need a deity to worship to please their cleric parents. Soon, Finny has an army, and they're hardly even under her command.

So Cyndor doesn't know.

Anla and the "army" are all from his plane. There is no continuity error in Anla's actions, so he is not alerted.

When Anla and the army show up with the other four members of the crew... Cyndor is gobsmacked. He'd been watching Finny so closely- he knew she'd found them, but she hadn't left the palace in ages. And who is this halfling, this army!?

It's fine, it's fine. This crew is a disaster, they'll tear themselves apart or he'll do it for them.

It happens. They're falling apart. One tries to kill himself.

Finny rips Istus' quilt.

Cyndor can't describe the feeling. He feels himself unraveling, hears his sister's voice crying for help as the world turns black. but then the world is back, he and his sister and the other gods are all seated in the dining hall, and before he can even really get his bearings, four disoriented adventurers are strolling into the room, led by a smug little halfling.

But he is Time, and his sister is Fate. They remember. The others do not.

His original "plan" is over with. They can't tear themselves apart--Finny won't let them.

Fine.

The four are in trouble. The Good, the Bad, and the Chosen, as the gods have taken to humorously calling them. Finny knows, somehow, and she leads the gods into battle to save the four as well as the son she doesn't deserve. She dies, like Cyndor knew she would, like Istus' quilts promised him in her sleep.

He underestimates how much they care beneath their emotionless facades. The blue one rips the quilt.

He's back at square one, and Istus is sick.

☼☼☼

He's worried about Furia, too. She's from his plane, after all, and he feels like he's failed her.

But then she's back, and the first thing she does is save someone, which is so much more like her than this imposter Furia seems to want to accept.

He brings them both back to the palace. This ends here. He won't let his world's Furia be caged like that again. Nothing but darkness for four years--how could he have let this continue?

He'll end her. He'll end _them_.

The clock strikes midnight, and the son Finny doesn't deserve creates a portal behind him. The imposter Furia escapes with the boy in tow. He follows them, his rage growing.

He feels every movement they make. Every movement they make is an error, after all. Every movement is a continuity mistake that he must correct.

But the original Furia is not, and so when she sneaks up behind him and stabs her dagger into his shoulder, he is caught unawares. For a moment, he feels even angrier--he's only trying to protect her.

But it doesn't matter. Raegan is back to her old bullshit, running away and tugging her friends with her as per usual. He grabs the two that remain and gives chase, but he is stopped by the void that swallows the palace doors.

He waited too long. The end is here.

☼☼☼

(Istus pops into Cyndor's view, and she looks even worse than before. Her skin has lost all color, leaving only a grey, translucent film, and her fingers are dust held together by desperate, sticky blood. Her quilt follows moments later, short and finished, and he barely has time to feel his own horror before the quilt rushes to fix itself, regrowing to fit the plane it belongs to. 

"I'll kill them," Cyndor promises, but Istus shakes her head.

"Don't._ Please."_

"…Fine. For you. I won't."

He's the god of continuity, and a part of him aches every time he lies, but the pain comes in tenfold when he lies to his sister. In fact… it's possible he's never done it before. Never lied, at least not to her face. She's too special to him.

Yet the world is ending. The void has taken the front wall of Finnaela's palace, and Ansenia is nowhere to be found. Istus takes every breath alongside a shuddering wheeze from her chest, and Cyndor knows her quilt has never looked quite so dull.

There's a first time for everything, he knows.

He knows.)


End file.
